Book 13: The Giver - Lois Lowry

Date Started: September 20, 2014
Date Finished: September 22, 2014

Woah woah woah. I finished this book on Monday, but just now on Wednesday I'm ready to write my review. This was another book I read in highschool, I knew I liked it but could vaguely remember it. I don't think I was quite prepared for the ending.

So the story starts out in this world where everything is equal and everyone is the same. No one has choices in this world. Jobs, partners, kids, names are all assigned to minimize pain, hurt, confusion, the unknown. Everyone is stuck in the middle of emotions and society; no one experiences the extremes.

Jonas is selected to be the new receiver of memories; this means he's the sole owner of all past memories, of all pain, suffering, war, happiness, love and such.. He learns these memories from the current receiver, who now goes by the Giver. The more memories he receives, the more he questions how the current society is being run. He sometimes agrees and sometimes disagrees. He ends up running away from the community with a baby, Gabriel, who was about to be 'released' meaning killed because the baby wasn't up to par with community standards. Jonas runs away hoping to find Elsewhere, where he thinks he can find people a new community that would understand. Jonas and Gabriel run out of food and strength, find a sled at the top of a snowy mountain, and they ride the sled down a hill towards a village with colored lights and Christmas trees and music. This also happens to be a collection of memories that the Giver had shown him throughout the book. You are left not knowing if they found Elsewhere, or if they died of hunger and hypothermia in the snow.

When I got to the ending of this book, I was in such shock! I was so hopeful that Jonas and Gabriel would make it to Elsewhere and would find what they were looking for. The character Gabriel represented such a new hope and a different kind of being that what Jonas and the rest of the community had been brought up in. Jonas had been feeding Gabriel memories for the past year as he was a fussy child and wouldn't sleep through the night. Jonas would give him memories of happiness to soothe him and put him to sleep. I was curious to see what kind of person Gabriel would grow up to be with all those good memories from early on. Reading the ending of them on the sled riding down the hill, recalling earlier in the book that Jonas had received these memories from the Giver, it broke my heart. My first reaction was that they died. There's no way he'd be venturing into a town that was the exact replica of another memory. I was so upset about it.

But then again, what if they did make it? The Giver's memories are memories from the past of all memories, so it's quite possible that they did make it to this Elsewhere and there was a sled waiting for them. It happened once to someone, so it could be there and happen again.

For me to not completely hate this book, I'll choose to believe the latter. I'm a sucker for happy endings, and I really wanted Gabriel to get the second chance he deserved and thrive.